


Fugue Feast

by icarus_chained



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Aftermath, Cities, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friendship, Fugue Feast (Dishonored), Grief, Hope, Low Chaos (Dishonored), M/M, Post-Dishonored (Video Game), Recovery, Secret Identity, Stolen Kisses, Unintended Consequences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:00:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22232176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: "There had always been something feverish about the Fugue. Something hazy and unreal."In the aftermath of the Interregnum, as Dunwall slowly pulls itself back together over several years, Corvo keeps watch through the Fugue Feast. To gauge the city's mood and ... to find some things. Strange lessons, and unreal pleasures. And gentle hopes.
Relationships: Corvo Attano/Jessamine Kaldwin, Corvo Attano/The Outsider (Dishonored)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 138





	Fugue Feast

**Author's Note:**

> A small, odd thing, while I try to get my writing groove back. Probably slightly sideways to canon, but I decided to run a little bit with the idea of the Fugue.

_For this time during the astrological alignment does not exist, and is not recorded._

There had always been something feverish about the Fugue. Something hazy and unreal. A time out of time, abruptly unmoored from all social constraint. A time of debauchery, of course, but often … more than that. Smaller than that. The pleasures forbidden to you on any given day, any _recorded_ day, could be tiny. And the chance to indulge in them, always so sweet.

The air was better this year, Corvo thought absently. Flitting from rooftop to rooftop, tasting the atmosphere of the city. The air was better. The mood. It was … cleaner. Less strained.

The years immediately following the Plague had been … less so. An airing of much darker, more desperate needs. Grievances. Pleasures and justices forbidden by tyranny. But Emily’s reign had calmed it since. Soothed it, over time. The city still boiled with the Fugue, roiled and seethed, but there wasn’t as much blood in the air. Wasn’t such a taint of rot and rage. The haze was sweeter, now. Older and full of debauchery once again.

It brought back memories. So many memories. 

Jessamine had loved the Fugue. Corvo, for his part, had always been baffled by it. A product of his upbringing, maybe. Everything had always been forbidden to him, and always taken anyway. He’d won his freedom with a stolen sword. The Fugue, for him, had been every day of the year. And he’d seen no problem with duty, either. Constraint. When you’d chosen it yourself, when you’d willingly bowed to it, there was no real reason to want to let it go again. The idea of a … a formalised transgression … had been baffling to him.

Not to Jess. He knew why, now. He hadn’t always been the best at understanding then. She hadn’t held it against him. She’d laughed at him. Led him, danced with him. Tiny pleasures, stolen sweetly. A kiss or two or three. He’d never understood, not properly, but he’d indulged her gladly every time. Let her take what she wished, never knowing fully why she needed it.

He knew now. _Understood_ , now. So much better. He knew what cages were, these days. Knew how much a prize a stolen kiss might be. And how … how very easily it could be taken away.

The air in the city was better. So much better. Almost again what it had been, all those years ago. Or not all. Only a very few. But what a dark, desperate few they had been. They had … changed so much. The air was _almost_ what it had been. But not all. Not quite. The Fugue had … lost its charm, maybe. Or lost its illusion. That edge of unreality, it couldn’t shield the way it once had. There was too much blood still in the air. Too much memory. 

His heart still hammered in his chest as he flitted, hither and yon. His eyes still watched for danger. For threat, to him and to all he loved.

It wasn’t the city’s fault. Not really. It wasn’t Emily’s either. Or the Fugue’s. 

It was his. He knew that. His heart, his eyes. His skin, still stretching gingerly around his scars. The Fugue hadn’t changed. A time out of time, it still passed unrecorded. He just wasn’t the innocent he’d once been. Wasn’t the naïf he’d managed for so many years to be. 

It did still offer some freedoms, though. Even to him. Maybe _especially_ to him. 

It offered a gauge, first of all. A barometer for the mood of the city. It was the vent, as it had always been, the valve through which all the passions of the city bled. A time outside the reach of the Abbey or the throne, where any and all behaviours might be tolerated. A time where secret desires were made public, without judgement or repercussion.

He wondered sometimes if Burrows would have allowed it. The man had always hated it, the raw chaos of it, the impropriety. It had backing, if course. Even had Jessamine not adored it, the Abbey itself would not stand in its way. It was a facet of the religious calendar, a ritual as old as any of them, and therefore not subject to mortal rule. But Burrows had still hated it. And armed with his watchmen, with his pylons and his walls of light, maybe he would have decided not to allow it.

It wouldn’t have ended well. Burrows wouldn’t have been the first person to try use the imperial throne to ban the feast. None had succeeded so far. But he might still have tried. Tightened the net of his quarantine more and more, until eventually the seams simply _burst_. The city had boiled for so long. Rage and grief. Weepers in the streets. Carts raining bodies. Rationing, growing tighter and tighter, strangling only the poor. It would have burst. Would have exploded. The removal of the Fugue, the last freedom available to truly everyone, would have been the last straw.

And he would have done it anyway. Corvo hadn’t a single doubt. In the end, more than anyone had ever suspected, Hiram Burrows had simply not been a sensible man.

So the festival was a gauge. A valve and a gauge, to see and to vent the horrors of the city. And it had been needed, these past few years. As violent as the Fugues had been, they had been needed. Fires and riots and broken quarantine walls. The burnt-out shells of watch posts. Metal towers brought tumbling down. It had been horrendous, but it had been necessary.

And Emily hadn’t seen it. Corvo had made sure of it. As painful as it had been to send her away, as much damage as it might have done to her reputation, to flee the city on a ‘pleasure cruise’ like so many of the other noble parasites, he had not and would not have been moved. Dunwall had convulsed itself. That first year particularly. Dunwall had roared up and spilled out and slopped blood all over the streets. She would not have been there for that. Not if he’d had to _swim_ out of the city with her carried on his back.

It had broken his heart, to deny her what Jess … what her mother had so loved. But he couldn’t countenance the thought of losing her. The Tower had borne the brunt of a lot of grudges that first Fugue. He couldn’t have seen her in its midst and still survived.

He’d stayed. Visibly. He’d publicly waved her off at the dock, seen her safely away with Sam and Geoff and Callista. Though he hadn’t been seen in his own face during the Fugue itself, there’d been an awareness that he’d stayed. That at least one member of the royal family was still among them, even if it was the least reputable and most worrisome. He’d owed them that much, in some ways. He’d only seen the last dregs of Burrows’ reign. Those few weeks between his escape and the Regent’s downfall. He’d owed the city an … acknowledgement, in some ways, of all they’d endured while he’d been … indisposed. So he’d stayed. He’d ridden out that first, worst Fugue.

And he’d ridden it out surprisingly unscathed, as well. As the Masked Felon, mostly, as a silent figure on rooftops and in alleys. As he’d spent almost all Fugues since. It was … It was one of the other gifts of the Fugue. That he _could_ ride it out like that. One mask among many, if an infamous one.

Though less infamous than he might have thought, as well. Especially that first year. And … possibly less anonymous too.

There’d been … a degree of awareness in the city. Of who he was. Of what he’d done. Maybe it wasn’t surprising. He’d hardly been _quiet_ in the immediate aftermath of his escape. He’d gone straight for Holger Square. Moved immediately to dismantle the Regent’s power. And maybe it might not have been him, maybe it might have been some other masked man, but no sooner had the Regent fallen, and the Loyalist conspiracy after him, then he’d emerged, in his own face, with their Empress in tow. It was … not the thickest disguise in the world, shall we say. He hadn’t really planned it to be. He hadn’t really been _planning_ at all.

It wasn’t mentioned much. If at all. Like the Fugue itself, it had apparently become one of those things that everyone politely agreed to ignore. A thing outside of time. Known, but not recorded. Even the Abbey kept its nose to itself, in spite of … many, _many_ things. The powers the Masked Felon possessed. The visible evidence of his heresy.

He did try not to give the lie to their forbearance. To be a thing that helped, not harmed. One mask among many, but one that didn’t leave blood spattered and spilled behind it. 

It was an effort complicated by another phenomenon he had not foreseen. Because the Felon _was_ known to have brought Burrows down. Or believed to have done so, at least. Because the Felon was a mask, one mask among many, and a mask that apparently _meant_ something.

He’d seen it that first year. Been shocked by it, over and over again. Metal masks, in the shapes of skulls. Most of them were crude. Roughly hewn, with none of Piero’s strange artistry. But so many of them. And not where he’d thought he might see them. He’d expected a few noble imitators. Playing along for the scandal of it. He’d not expected …

He represented something now. Something … terrifying, to the part of him still loyal to the bone to his daughter and his daughter’s throne. Something that … horrified and terrified him in equal measure, and yet also ...

Humbled him. Deeply.

Some of the masks were made from Burrows’ detritus. Bent and hammered out of the rusted scraps of guard posts. Rictus, metal grins, designed purely for vengeance. Everything he’d been terrified he would become. That part had horrified. But they’d also …

He’d seen people do so many things, since then, while wearing those masks. That first Fugue, and every Fugue since. Tear down towers. Spill blood. Burn buildings. All of that. But also … Pull people through quarantine walls. Fight … ridiculous duels, for honour and in defence. Pretend to be heroes, pretend to be villains. Get roaring drunk and not much else. Posture for their loved ones, or anyone else they particularly wanted to impress. _Dance_. Dance with people. All wearing his face. Or … what had become, in more ways than he fully understood, his face.

_That_ was something unreal, still. Something that the horrors of Coldridge and Jess’ loss hadn’t managed to ground and sunder. It was still tainted, still bloodied, but it had … all the hazy unreality of the old Fugue. To see that, on every street corner, while he flitted above them. Small plays, almost, of everything he might have been. It was … unnerving. Humbling. Unreal.

It was a defence, as well. For him, from the Abbey. From anyone else who might hurt him for what he had become. What he had done was widely known, widely suspected, but not _spoken_. Because he was not alone. Somehow. By this strange means. From that first Fugue on, he had not been alone. Only one mask among many.

Maybe the Plague, in its own way, had been as unreal as the Fugue. And all the players in it, as unremarked, and unrecorded.

He’d let Emily stay, the second year. After that first, violent surge had run through. That first bleeding of all the city’s badly healed wounds. He’d been terrified. Every moment of every day. But he’d let her stay. Not in the Tower, not hemmed away, by the throne or the echo of Burrows. He’d brought her to the Hounds Pits. Let her be seen. Safe, or as safe as possible, among their friends, but also … among their _people_. Not an Empress in a Tower, but a little girl in a mask, playing in the mud among her friends. 

She’d charmed. Delighted. Been not at all perturbed by the informality of it. Well, she wouldn’t be. Her mother hadn’t been either. It was Fugue. All social constraint was gone. Even if she’d wanted to be upset, like Burrows, she wasn’t _allowed_ to be. But she hadn’t been. There’d been no artifice to her delight. Everyone had noticed. She’d spent a year of her life living among whores and killers. There was nothing in her to be shocked anymore, not by the worst excesses of the Fugue.

That had broken his heart too. In another way, for another reason. But it had … shown the truth of her. To a lot of people. The Fugue was not recorded, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t _remembered_. Sometimes masks were a shield, to hide the truth of a person, to let them enact their worst pleasures without consequence.

And other times, they showed people more truly than their faces.

He tried to stay for them, now. The Fugues. Even when Emily was elsewhere. He tried to … _involve_ himself in them. As he never had with Jess. He understood them better, now. Appreciated them, no matter how much more they terrified him. What she had seen first, all those years ago, he understood now. The necessity of them. The terror and the delight. 

The joys of small pleasures, all too often forbidden.

Because … that was the other gift. The other thing the Fugues had brought him. In the aftermath. In the wake. The other strange, tiny, _unreal_ pleasure.

“Hello, Corvo,” said a voice. As he flitted down onto a set of steps, above a street full of raucous bodies. The world twisted, slightly. Went sideways. The light took on a purple tinge. The mark on his hand, the thing that had brought him here, tingled faintly. Corvo cupped his other hand around it.

And smiled.

“Hello,” he said. Softly and simply. He turned to face the figure that had appeared behind him. The strange, heavy youth, with his black eyes, and his air of ancient danger. Perched on the wall beside the steps. Head tilted slightly. Hazy. Unreal. The perfect picture of the Fugue.

Jess would have loved him. Would have found him perfectly delightful. Maybe even had she known who he was.

The Outsider smiled too. A lift of his lips, a strange, rueful mockery. At the Fugue, maybe. At himself, at Corvo. All of the above. He flitted to Corvo’s side. An unreal motion, on the verge of imperceptible. The Outsider was even less constrained than the rest of them this night, by reality as much as propriety. At least, so it seemed. He moved to Corvo’s side, and looked up at him curiously.

“I’ve seen you kill two men tonight,” he said, with that little twist of his lips. “I watched you fight four duels, lie down with six different women, and at least as many men. I saw you stand naked on a bridge with a large bottle of wine and declare yourself Emperor.” His smile softened, went sly and contemplative. “It’s curious, to see so many echoes of ‘Corvo Attano’ abroad tonight. Each a facet of what might have been. Enlarged and grotesque. Don’t you think?” 

His own thoughts reflected back at him. Corvo laughed softly. The Outsider had a knack for that. Had a talent for challenges, obscurely phrased, and yet beneath that so very blunt. But he wasn’t wrong. The strange life that the Fugue had given to the Masked Felon would never not be strange. It could never fail to humble, or to terrify.

“They’re bigger than me now,” he agreed quietly. “Frighteningly so.”

Frighteningly. Yes. So much larger and more terrible than he had ever been. Not only for how they’d killed people. He’d never been that large. That fearless. The entire time he’d worn the mask, he’d been nothing but a quivering, desperate, terrified man underneath it. The metal had hidden that. Disguised it so thoroughly that no one now could realise. The gauntness and the terror and the scarred skin had been covered over. Only … 

Only the myth remained. The story of a mask who’d brought a tyrant down.

Something strange flickered across the Outsider’s face. Some echo, some _understanding_. Maybe a pity, too. Or a regret. He touched Corvo’s cheek. A soft, cool touch against metal.

“Yes,” he said, gently, a bottomless well of something dark and tainted with memory in his voice. “The story is always larger. And less full of blood.”

Corvo reached up. Curled his hand gently around the Outsider’s. One day, he thought, he would ask what lay behind the Outsider’s mask. What lay beyond the Void and the black eyes, at the bottom of the Abbey’s rhetoric. It would be small, he thought, and probably sordid. It would have a quivering, desperate creature at the heart of it. Blood and bone and cries in the dark. A lot of stories had that at the base of them. He was learning that so quickly.

But not now. He wouldn’t ask it now. The Fugue was not a time for truth, or constraint. The Fugue was a time for masks, and stolen pleasures, and things that would not ever be recorded.

Jess hadn’t done her best to teach him that, so long ago, for him to ignore it now.

“Come with me,” he murmured, tugging lightly on the Outsider’s hand as he moved. As he drifted backwards down the steps, towards the street. The Outsider … followed. After a bemused moment. A curious, half-mocking look on his face. He allowed it. He’d been allowing a lot, these last few Fugues. The most powerful thing in the world, and he allowed it. Baffled and bemused. Indulging his companion, without an ounce of understanding.

Corvo didn’t laugh at him. Not as Jess would have. He doubted he’d ever manage to be as light and gentle and determined as she had been. Too much had happened for that. But he could … lead. He could offer. Just a little.

They made such an image, he thought. Guiding a _god_ out into the dancing throng. They made such a perfect picture for the Fugue. So wrong and so right. So much the truth, and so much the lie. He knew what they looked like. Him older, taller. Wearing the mask of death, the metal skull of fate come calling. And the Outsider. So slight and hesitant. A youth, an innocent, but for the black eyes and the faint, purple haze of unreality.

Death and the Maiden. In all ways. Except not. Or, not the right way around.

The Outsider knew it, too. Corvo could see it. The god laughed silently, as he registered the glances around them. A flash of surprise and amusement. Rich irony, wondering how much the expressions would change if they knew the Outsider himself walked among them. _Danced_ among them. In the arms of a quivering, terrified man.

And yet …

Jess had been so gentle with him. Corvo only realised how much so in hindsight. He’d been the most dangerous swordsman in the Empire, and she’d been so gentle with him. Understanding so much that he didn’t. Couldn’t. He knew now. Was so desperately, heartbrokenly grateful now.

There was an odd delight, in the way the Outsider allowed himself to be held. A curiosity and a wariness. A god, and he let himself be led, be guided. Amused and … perhaps delighted. That someone might want to.

How long had it been, since the god had allowed himself some stolen pleasures? How long since anyone had _offered_ any?

What greater transgression could there be, after all, than to dance with the Outsider?

And this … this was what the Fugue was for. For all of them. From the greatest to the smallest. This was what the Feast, as battered and stained as it might now be, could still offer. This time outside of time, these nights and days of unreality.

Freedom. Anonymity. Unity. Truth. And, underneath them, most importantly …

Small pleasures, _comforts_ , forbidden so many times.

The Outsider looked up at him. Tilted his head, wry and unreal and wildly amused. Half-mocking, half-gentle, half-regretful. The Void itself, the fearful youth. An innocent Death. Jess would have delighted in him. She would have laughed at him, and guided him gently.

She would have kissed him. Corvo knew it. Felt it, even still, from that place where she still beat inside his chest. All transgressions aside, she would have kissed him. He was too beautiful and too bemused to allow anything else. 

So Corvo did, too. Caught up in the spirit of Fugue, so much less bloodstained, now, and more full of debauchery once again. He guided the god in his arms into a darker corner, feeling the amusement and indulgence that allowed it, and lifted his mask to steal a smaller pleasure. The Outsider startled, somehow. Even as obvious as Corvo had been. As many small touches as he’d stolen these last few Fugues. The Outsider jumped slightly, flinched against his lips, more startled and human than any god of the void should ever be. 

And then he softened. Startled and bemused, indulgent and amused. 

He kissed back. Clumsily. Copying Corvo’s actions, rather than seeking his own instincts. A soft, strange mimicry. As heart-breaking as everything about the Fugue had become. 

Corvo crushed him close. Pulled him in against his chest, swept him back further into the shadows. Stood between him and the light, and the _eyes_ , so that no one would see. So that no one could try and take advantage. A foolish instinct, maybe. A facet of the same terror that had lived in Corvo’s chest since that day in the gazebo, and showed no signs of ever ebbing. Useless, against the reality and _un_ reality of a god. He indulged it anyway. He had reasons to be so terrified.

The Outsider laughed at him. Gently, even still, though not without mockery. He reached up to trace Corvo’s now-bared cheek.

“Careful, Corvo,” he murmured, wry and aware of every irony. “Even the Fugue might not cover all sins. You’re a heretic already. Will you consort with me on top of it?”

And that was true. The Fugue was not recorded, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t _remembered_. But still. Even still. He had a shield. What good was it, if he didn’t try to use it?

Corvo smiled crookedly. Hearing Jess’ voice in his head. An old, familiar quote.

“ _No complaint is given for those who have wronged others,_ ” he said quietly. “ _Those who have deviated from ancient codes, or discarded oaths. For this time during the astrological alignment does not exist, and is not recorded._ ” He shrugged gingerly, still holding the Outsider close. “This wrongs no one, and discards no oaths. That leaves only ancient codes, and I’m not sure how much I care about those. It will … it will cover enough, I think. Do you?”

And even if it didn’t, he would fight for it anyway. There had been a man behind the mask all along. Even when it failed to shield, he would fight anyway. 

Fearful as he was, he had always been ready to die for those he loved. 

The world tilted slightly. Hazed, trembled. Slid that little further towards the unreal. The Outsider stared at him, unblinking. Eyes black and fathomless. A god, however small and innocent he seemed. An ancient creature, as old as the Fugue, as stained with old blood. But he was small, still. And maybe, in some ways, innocent. He tilted his head, wary and curious. And, after a moment … faded. Allowed himself to be small. Almost real.

“Well then,” he said, a strange smile curling his lips. “My dear Corvo. What sort of transgressions did you have in mind?”

He’d have seen a thousand of them, after all. A hundred thousand. Every transgression any man had ever made, maybe. But that wasn’t … quite what Corvo had in mind.

“… Whatever my companion desires,” he said softly. Reaching down to take the Outsider’s hand. The same promise he’d made to Jess, every Fugue. Every day. So happy to offer every stolen sweetness. Whatever his companion desired.

It was … a good memory. A good echo, and an honest desire. She’d be proud of it. 

The Outsider … faltered, faintly. Shuttered briefly, a flare of startled wariness. Hiding, perhaps, behind a mask. But fair enough. That was what the Fugue was for, after all. And some masks, those of a god, or an Empress, were harder to lay down. Corvo didn’t mind that.

The Outsider didn’t falter for long. He straightened slightly. Nettled. Almost challenging. But … not fully. There was an edge, still. A thin thread of …

Hope. Corvo thought maybe hope.

“What I desire,” the god murmured softly. Something dark and laughing beneath it. Fit for a Fugue. “But I’m not of this world, Corvo. Not anymore. Why don’t you … show me, then. What you think I might desire.”

Corvo would ask, one day. What Coldridge had set the scars beneath the Outsider’s skin. What gazebo had led his heart to hammering, even under the shielding veil of Fugue. But … not now. Now, he would do as Jess had done, instead. Once upon a happier time. He would … show his companion what other small treasures, comforts and pleasures, could nestle hidden by a now-sweetened Fugue.

She had been gentle with him. His Jess. So he would be gentle in his turn. In memory of her, and … for his companion’s sake. For the Outsider. He had an idea it had been a rare thing. 

“How about another dance?” he suggested softly. “I’m somewhat out of fashion, if I was ever in it, but I think I remember enough to try again.”

The Outsider frowned at him. Bemused and sceptical, and this time Corvo _did_ laugh at him. Just gently. The way Jess had done. He could see why, now. He could see how stiff and innocent he must once have been. He shook his head, smiling helplessly, and tugged the god close by his hand once more. Pulled his mask back on, and tugged his partner back out into the fray.

There would be cages enough tomorrow, for either or both of them. Tonight was Fugue. Tonight was a night for small pleasures and sweet comforts. Tonight was theirs.

And Corvo was bloodied enough that he would not let it be taken away.


End file.
